Housing Post Covid 19 (Hopefully)!

Stephen is a chartered Town Planner with almost 20 years’ of experience working within the planning industry, initially as a local authority planner, then as a planning consultant before working at a senior level within the housebuilding industry. Stephen is a former Chairman of the Royal Town Planning Institute North East and applies his strong commercial awareness to each and every project whether big or small. His specialisms include land acquisition, strategic land searching and promotion, planning applications, planning appeal, Public Inquiries, Local Plan Examination and development appraisals 

Brett has 14 years experience in property regeneration, management and valuation. He is a Chartered Surveyor and RICS Registered Valuer with a Masters degree in Real Estate Management from Northumbria University, with an undergraduate degree in Geography with Computer Science.

Brett has worked in both the public and private sector during his career, acting for a range of clients across the country.

Brett started his career with North Tyneside Council acting as a Surveyor undertaking a range of services to help the Council manage their property portfolio efficiently. This included regeneration projects, acquisitions, disposals, valuations, landlord and tenant, and property management.

In 2012, Brett transferred to Capita as part of their technical services partnership with North Tyneside Council, where he continued to deliver projects on behalf of the Council, as well as taking on valuation and viability work for clients across the country.

Brett presented evidence to the Planning Inspector as part of the Examination in Public for the North Tyneside Local Plan. In particular, this related to the deliverability of two key strategic sites within North Tyneside, amounting to 5,000 dwellings.

He has also delivered financial viability appraisals for local planning authorities including North Tyneside, Blackburn and Salford. Brett has delivered or overseen annual asset valuation programmes for over a dozen local authorities and organisations.

Stephanie has a busy practice in planning and local government which includes all areas of planning work from court challenges and inquiries to prosecutions. She acts for a variety of public and private sector clients and is qualified to accept instructions via public access.

Stephanie is consistently ranked as one of the top planning juniors nationally. Chambers and Partners describes her as “a rising star of the Planning Bar” and Legal 500 states that she is “a superb barrister, highly intelligent and quick to grasp the issues, an excellent advocate, tenacious and thorough”.

Rob’s role includes Chief Planner at Northumberland County Council, one England’s largest single tier authorities. Previously positions have included Chief Planner at Sheffield City Council and at Derbyshire County Council. Rob is a former director of the Planning Officers Society, sat on the Policy Board of the Town & Country Planning Association and conducts LPA improvement support programmes for the Planning Advisory Service. He has a long history of involvement local, strategic,  economic and environmental planning. He has contributed to the development of planning & environmental policy, legislation and practice in England, Scotland, regional government and in Germany.

Derek is a Director at arc^4, the housing and data consultancy and senior advisor to the Affordable Housing Institute, Boston Massachusetts with whom he has been working on his Rehousing Ukraine initiative. His work centres on affordable housing demand and regeneration, working with public and private developers and investors to analyse markets, develop products and implement solutions.

He has 30 years' experience in housing, as investor, regulator, policy maker, consultant and non-executive, working in Whitehall, the European Institute for Urban Affairs, the Housing Corporation and as the northern head of the National Housing Federation.

An Oxford-educated economist and qualified demographer, Derek has analysed the socio-economic demand characteristics of hundreds of housing markets across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Derek is an experienced broadcaster and writer e.g. appearing on BBC1’s Breakfast, 6 O’clock News, Radio 5’s Wake up to Money, also writing multiple pieces for the Guardian, Building magazine, Inside Housing, etc.

Melissa Flynn is a Senior Development Manager at Vistry Partnerships delivering housing and regeneration across the North East. She has recently been responsible for securing planning consent for the regeneration of Sunderland Civic Centre. Prior to her role at Vistry, Melissa was a planning solicitor advising housebuilders, commercial developers and the wider development industry.

Jennifer joined Lichfields in 2012. She is an experienced Associate Director who has worked on a variety of projects, specialising in housing and mixed-use development including housing for older people. She has extensive experience of promoting potential housing sites, including strategic housing sites, through the Local Plan process; preparing and submitting planning applications and Environmental Statements for developments of varying scales; undertaking community consultation; and multi-disciplinary working with co-consultants. Jennifer is also proficient in undertaking five year housing land supply assessments and producing evidence to support planning inquiries.

Karen has held a variety of posts during her career, mainly associated with relationship management, evidence gathering and interpretation, strategic planning and project implementation.

At Gateshead Council for 12 years, Karen worked on the housing stock’s capital programme, strategy development and working across the Council and with partners to ensure the delivery of affordable housing including for people with specialist needs. 

With a move to Bridging NewcastleGateshead, one of only ten Housing Market Renewal Pathfinders in the country, as the Head of Research and Strategy, Karen worked with the local authorities, partners and independent Board to develop place-based strategies for renewal that made a real difference to communities. 

Moving to the Homes and Communities Agency in 2010 (now Homes England), Karen first worked in the North East, then North East, Yorkshire and The Humber as the Strategy Manager responsible for the HCA's regional governance, strategy, information and policy development.  Later, she specialised in working with housing providers and local authorities to deliver affordable homes to meet housing needs.  She now works with the North of Tyne and York and North Yorkshire local authorities and North of Tyne Combined Authority to understand their ambitions for their places and to support housing delivery and place making. 

She is also proud to be one of the Agency’s champions for vulnerable and older people and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Housing.      

Origin Planning Services are a proactive and commercially focused Town Planning Consultancy that help our clients navigate through the complexities of the UK planning system. We aim to offer a professional and responsive service helping clients to secure a positive outcome in the shortest possible timescales.